Poems by Georg Heym , Antony Hasler (review)

Abstract

1148 Reviews as an area of common ground between German Aestheticism and philosophy after the 'linguistic turn', he argues that poetry around 1900 reflects and modifies 'the philosophical effortto voice the potentiality of language to speak itself (p. 9). Both poetry and philosophy espouse the ideal of a 'reciprocal gaze' which can 'replace the superficiality of scientific knowledge with the deeper truth silently spoken by the things themselves' (p. 28). The firsttwo chapters situate the aestheticization of reality around 1900 in a broader historical and philosophical context. Strathausen describes a clash between two scopic regimes, an objective and a subjective model of vision, exemplified by Bergson's life philosophy and Husserl's phenomenology respectively. Aestheticism, he suggests, fuses these two impulses. An excursus raises methodological questions about how to approach a poetry that sets out to critique the representational function of language. Here Strathausen outlines hermeneutic and post-hermeneutic traditions of criticism, and argues that modernist poetry,forwhich language is both meaning and matter, requires its reader to draw on both traditions. Strathausen's concerns are also influenced by Kittler, Heidegger, and Adorno, whose works are discussed at length. In the subsequent chapter Aestheticism is considered as 'an imploded version of Romanticism' (p. 12) which 'continues the hermeneutic search forthe essence of things not on the level of the signified [...], but on the level of the material presence of the signifier visualized in the form of a poem' (p. 103). The study concludes with three chapters on Hofmannsthal, Rilke, and George re? spectively, in which Strathausen attempts to demonstrate that 'poetry around 1900 focuses on the visible Gestalt of language as a means to compete aesthetically with the increasing popularity and "reality effect" of photographic images' (p. 13). The value and interest of this book for literary scholars lie in its juxtaposition of Aestheticist poetry with developments in philosophy. However, some may find it disappointingthat , despite the prominence ofthe word 'poetry' in the title, Strathausen's concerns are evidently primarily with philosophy and broad questions of theory and methodology. Throughout most of the book his theses about poetry rely on broad and undifferentiated categories which are never defined and are used interchangeably (e.g. 'Aestheticism', 'modernism', 'poetry around 1900'). While the author's approach to philosophy is scholarly, his claims concerning poetry tend to lack proper argumentation and evidence, and the chapters devoted to the three poets all too often reveal an insecure grasp of the primary material and a lack of familiarity with the full range of existing literary scholarship. There are some contradictions in the argu? ment. For example, the idea that poetry around 1900 uses words as 'both transparent signs and material entities' (p. 13) seems incompatible with the claim that Aestheti? cism iiberates [language] from its traditional role of representation' (p. 9). At times Strathausen's style tends towards the obfuscatory, his overuse ofthe word 'literally' (almost always in a most unliteral sense) grates, and the text is marred by a number of errors in spelling and syntax. University of Exeter Helen Bridge Poems. By Georg Heym. Translated by Antony Hasler. London: Libris. 2004. xxiii + 2i6pp. ?14.95. ISBN 1-870352-97-1. In an English context Georg Heym is perhaps best known for his city poem 'The God of the City', and for his macabre death aged only twenty-four. This beautifully presented bilingual edition of his poems aims to remedy that. Heym was a curious phenomenon, a volatile and melancholy character, who enjoyed preposterously rude health (to his publisher Ernst Rowohlt he reportedly looked like a butcher's assistant); a Romantic visionary who, at the age of fourteen, could write 'Im Sterben hab ich MLR, 100.4,2005 1149 meine Heimat gesehn', and yet aged twenty-three aspired to be a 'Kiirassierleutnant', or alternatively, 'Terrorist'. Heym has been translated before, by Michael Hamburger, Christopher Middleton, and Patrick Bridgwater, but this edition works hard to allow all of his facets to emerge, from the peevish jibes at his university professors, or a passionate commentary on the French Revolution and its Napoleonic aftermath (in? fluenced by his reading of Buchner), to elegiac nature poetry, some subtle love poetry, and the many texts of alienation, figuringhis 'Menschen...